According to the sworn testimony of former FBI Director James Comey, President Trump pulled him into a private meeting in the oval office and said, about the FBI’s ongoing investigation of former national security advisor Michael Flynn, “I hope you can let this go.” One question raised by the testimony is whether it was reasonable for Comey to interpret President Trump’s statement as a directive. While labor law does not have a direct answer, the National Labor Relations Board has held that when a company president expresses his “hope” to a worker, it can be coercive.

In a 1995 case, KNTV, Inc., the company president had a private meeting with a reporter where the president told the reporter, “I hope you won’t continue to be an agitator or antagonize the people in the newsroom.” The NLRB found that the statement was coercive in large part because it was made by the company’s highest ranking official and it was made in a meeting that the reporter was required to attend alone. Sound familiar?

In other words, the expert agency that regularly adjudicates disputes about whether particular statements by an employer rise to the level of coercion has held that when the president of an organization expresses his “hopes” in a private conversation with a worker, those comments will likely have a “chilling effect” on the employee.

Thus, this statement was made to Wayne by Park, the Respondent’s highest ranking official. It was made during a meeting, in Park’s office, that Wayne was required to attend alone despite his request that the Respondent meet with the employee committee. Further, Park’s statement was directed at Wayne’s protected attempts to have the Respondent address employee pay issues. In these circumstances, Park’s comments had a chilling effect and interfered with Wayne’s exercise of rights guaranteed by Section 7 of the Act.

[Employee's] highest ranking official. Check.
During a meeting, in [official's] office, that [employee] was required to attend alone. Check.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

SLQ wrote:The Vox article is interesting and I tend to agree that Trump is a bullshitter. I don't think he cares about the truth. However, I think he does know that what he is saying is not true.

Go back a sentence -- he doesn't care. He's not trying to convince people that he is right, he's trying to find out if people will demonstrate their personal loyalty to him by repeating whatever nonsense comes out of his mouth. The more outrageous it is, the more effective it is.

They are not mutually exclusive. (I also think the article was focused on the psychological and social aspects of how Trump behaves, not on any legal standard by which he may eventually be judged.)

He cannot be lying (trying to defend an untruth) and bullshitting (delegitimizing the very concept of truth) at the same time. This has nothing to do with legalities, but rather with how to understand Trump's strategy and tactics. Without this understanding, I think efforts to oppose him will be much more likely to fail and as well as generating unintended consequences.
The legal standard here is "it's okay if the President does it" and the only thing that can change that is conviction by the Senate.
This is a political fight, not a legal battle.

I also think that his squirming when someone tries to pin him down (i.e. in the deposition in the "you're not really a billionaire" case) does show mens rea.

Maybe, if you were able to pin him down under questioning which he was forced to answer, you could establish mens rea for one of his lies, but by the time you did you would have drowned in a sea of bullshit.

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

Against Trump, the tactics of fact-checking and debunking are little more than barely audible noise.

Legally, Trump will be assessed on the scale of normal behavior, not his own bullshit reality or some intent to create propaganda, instead of to tell a lie.

Trump cannot be held accountable to the law, only to the Constitution. It will take about 40 Congresscritters to do so thus I think it is fair to say that Trump will neither be assessed legally nor on the scale of normal behavior.

Legally, I think bullshitting and lying are the same thing. The fact that he intends to bullshit, instead of lie, isn't a defense. That's like saying "I didn't intend to kill him, your honor. I just wanted to shoot him so he would be afraid of me."

You are just making my case that bullshitting is far, far worse. You said the law cannot distinguish the two. Which means that the law cannot be expected to remedy bullshitting (because that's not what it was made to do). Trump cannot be beaten in a court of law (although he can be slowed and mitigated in situations the courts are designed to deal with such as the Muslim ban) and he must be opposed with a coherent strategy and intelligent (and honorable) tactics for there to be hope of success anytime soon. At least that's what Sun Tzu says.

Is his defense going to be that he's mentally ill, and didn't really know lies from truth?

His defense is bullshit. His offense is bullshit. He's not going to come up with some theory as to why what he did was justified -- ever. We are seeing his entire strategy play out right in front of us and it has been very effective so far. Any individual issue gets drowned out by the sea of bullshit from time to time and between that causing issues to lose traction and sheer outrage fatigue nothing reaches a critical mass. Or at least it hasn't yet.

That's the only way to get around the fact that what he says is not true, and that he intended to lie. And the probability that Trump would allow a mental illness defense is about the same as for Dylan Roof. Roof wanted people to know he meant to do what he did. So does Trump.

Trump wants everyone to show loyalty to him. This makes him extremely leery of anyone with even a modicum of integrity. We always fear what we don't understand (one way of thinking about science is that it has expanded what we don't understand by countless orders of magnitude -- which is pretty friggin terrifying) and I don't think Donald really "gets" any motive besides being for him or being against him.

Edit: clarify and typo.

Sorry to be all ranty about this and I certainly mean no disrespect to you or anyone else, but I believe this is really important and we need to talk about it. There is a reason the quote I used is in my signature and it is as true today as it was when Sun Tzu wrote it. The Democrats have given us repeated examples of the noise before defeat and have not shown any indication that they understand Trump enough or have the will to devise a strategy and tactics that will not just beat Trump, but reform and repair our government as well. Like Nancy Pelosi just said, they are waiting for him to "impeach himself". Sounds like the slowest road to victory to me.

I believe their are better options.

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
---Sun Tzu (quoting Thomas Jefferson)nam-myoho-renge-kyo---Thomas Jefferson (quoting Slartibartfast)

Impeaching himself is a good strategy given the cards played. The Republicans are so in the pocket of big business and so greedy and amoral(at least their leaders are), the Democrats have done well in my view with loudly obstructing confirmations, using the motivated voters whether they are Democrats or not, calling Trump and the Republicans on their lies and hypocrisy which they must do every time, then persisting because that is how this type of war is won. Trump's popularity is plummeting. No Republicans are going on tv shows to support some of his more outlandish and outrageous actions. Fox News is losing viewership and advertisers. Breitbart has lost 90% of its advertising and can't buy Sky. Special elections are diverting the Republicans from their agenda. Trump has lost every round in court. A special counsel approved by everyone has been appointed.

It takes a campaign like this to win against 20+ years of rising hate media, Republican greed, the Russians, and the unmotivated voters.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

Tiredretiredlawyer wrote:Impeaching himself is a good strategy given the cards played. The Republicans are so in the pocket of big business and so greedy and amoral(at least their leaders are), the Democrats have done well in my view with loudly obstructing confirmations, using the motivated voters whether they are Democrats or not, calling Trump and the Republicans on their lies and hypocrisy which they must do every time, then persisting because that is how this type of war is won. Trump's popularity is plummeting. No Republicans are going on tv shows to support some of his more outlandish and outrageous actions. Fox News is losing viewership and advertisers. Breitbart has lost 90% of its advertising and can't buy Sky. Special elections are diverting the Republicans from their agenda. Trump has lost every round in court. A special counsel approved by everyone has been appointed.

It takes a campaign like this to win against 20+ years of rising hate media, Republican greed, the Russians, and the unmotivated voters.

You are so right. We just need to keep it up, never stop.

"I know that human being and fish can coexist peacefully"
--- George W Bush

Some Republicans are crowing that James Comey's testimony, standing alone, does not establish that Trump committed a crime ...

(1) ... this is 'way different from being able to say that Comey 'vindicated' or 'exonerated' Trump; and
(2) ... if anyone thinks back to Watergate, or even to a lot of TV dramas like "Law and Order" and "Matlock", the testimony of any one witness is seldom, standing alone, enough to tie up all the loose threads, it's the combined testimony of a number of witnesses that usually does the job.

We are at the very beginning of what may be a substantial number of witnesses in a number of different Congressional hearings and it may take the efforts of several analysts, combing through a multitude of different hearings, to pick up the facts from various witnesses that make a solid case against Trump.

I think Trump may have used Comey, who, like Cotton, is so eager to please his overlord that he has tunnel, maybe even sphincterlike vision.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

Tiredretiredlawyer wrote:I think Trump may have used Comey, who, like Cotton, is so eager to please his overlord that he has tunnel, maybe even sphincterlike vision.

Not quite sure where you're going here...can you explain further?

Imagine the rectal area with a sphincter. Cotton sees things from the inside of the "tunnel" looking out through the sphincter which mostly remains closed.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

Tiredretiredlawyer wrote:I think Trump may have used Comey, who, like Cotton, is so eager to please his overlord that he has tunnel, maybe even sphincterlike vision.

Not quite sure where you're going here...can you explain further?

Imagine the rectal area with a sphincter. Cotton sees things from the inside of the "tunnel" looking out through the sphincter which mostly remains closed.

Thanks, but it was the equivalency you seemed to be drawing between Comey's and Cotton's desire to please that I wasn't clear about. It seems to me that Comey has done everything butt but try to please his superiors (Lynch then, Trump now).

June bug wrote:
Not quite sure where you're going here...can you explain further?

Imagine the rectal area with a sphincter. Cotton sees things from the inside of the "tunnel" looking out through the sphincter which mostly remains closed.

Thanks, but it was the equivalency you seemed to be drawing between Comey's and Cotton's desire to please that I wasn't clear about. It seems to me that Comey has done everything butt but try to please his superiors (Lynch then, Trump now).

Sorry. I meant Sessions, the self righteous weasel.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

Still over exercised about Sessions hearing. That stuff was a cake walk to me before I retired. Very little strength now for detachment.

"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, feminist and founder with others of NAACP.

Tiredretiredlawyer wrote:
Imagine the rectal area with a sphincter. Cotton sees things from the inside of the "tunnel" looking out through the sphincter which mostly remains closed.

Thanks, but it was the equivalency you seemed to be drawing between Comey's and Cotton's desire to please that I wasn't clear about. It seems to me that Comey has done everything butt but try to please his superiors (Lynch then, Trump now).

Sorry. I meant Sessions, the self righteous weasel.

Yeah, but Sessions has a head shaped specially for poking its way out of Trump's spinchter.

Mike Allen 1 hour agoExclusive: Comey to come out hot on book tour, correct lies
Look for fired FBI Director James Comey to come out hot on the book tour that begins 30 days from now for "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," out April 17 from Flatiron Books.

We're told: Comey has been quiet for nearly a year — fired by President Trump on May 9, precipitating the appointment of special counsel Bob Mueller eight days later. He has heard a lot of lies and misstatements about the FBI that he intends to correct. He didn’t want to be in this position, but is embracing it.

There'll be more announcements about his book tour soon, but he’s eager to go to where his critics are and take them on.
He has seen three presidents up close (George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump), and will compare and contrast the first two he served to the third.As you can guess, what he says is going to rattle a lot of china.
I'll interview Comey at his sole Washington appearance on the tour — on April 30 at 7 p.m. (Lisner Auditorium, 730 21st St. NW), at an event presented jointly by Politics and Prose Bookstore and Axios.

Comey's blitz: See a list of Comey's three announced network TV sit-downs, and his 11 in-person appearances, from Seattle to Kansas City to Miami.